BP Unfiltered

Baseball Prospectus at Fox Sports: Safety in Pitching Prospects?

At the end of the 2012 season, we looked at whether TINSTAAPP was as true now as it had always been. There were encouraging signs: In the six years after appearing in the top 50 on a prospect ranking, pitchers were pitching more, and pitching better, than they had when Gary Huckabay coined the phrase. But this has been a very, very sad spring for young pitchers, so at Fox Sports we updated the research to see whether the trend had continued, and looked at the 2012 prospect class to see whether they were on track. An excerpt:

It used to be that a talented pitcher was identified at 20 and, as often as not, would flame out before we ever saw him dominating in the majors. Today, we're mourning pitchers after they've already dominated in the majors. It's still not perfect, but, as these pitching prospects' collective performances over time has shown, it means that teams are getting a lot more production out of their young arms.

Bonus reason to click over: When's the last time you thought about Deolis Guerra?